It is a well known practice to monitor certain types of sound pollution by sending a surveyor on site equipped with a manual sound-level meter, audiometer, cameras or the like, to gather data relative to the sound environment at the site. Hence, a surveying report may be produced with the manually collected data, having information such as the type of sound emitted and its intensity, video imaging of the source of the sound emission, the date and hour of the sound emission, the geographic location of the site, as well as many other parameters. Although having a surveyor on site is a simple way of detecting sound infractions, this above-described practice is logistically expensive and very inefficient. Surveillance reports seldom cover full days, unless surveyors are on site 24 hours a day, and this is not practical.
Roads often used by freight carriers such as trucks are the site of excessive noise levels. There are plural sources of noise in the freight carriers. For instance, compression braking, deficient maintenance on the trucks, heavy loads and speeding are various causes of excessive noise levels for freight carriers. Excessive noise levels are problematic in some instances. For example, a noisy truck traveling on a road in the vicinity of residential areas disturbs the local residents, especially in late-night or early-morning hours.
Regulations have been set forth to overcome this problem, and these regulations establish the limit between acceptable sound levels and sound-level infractions. In order for these regulations to be applied, infractions need to be reported. The method of having a surveyor on site is not logistically feasible for obvious reasons.